The Frankenprotege rallycar worklog

[therieldeal]

jay i really dont understand the issue you are having or why you're having a problem at all. unless the NZ guys are being sneaky and hiding some hidden issues, this should work with all stock suspension, aside from possibly needing to widen the track slightly like i did.

that being said you might need to remove the control arm brackets in order to drop the car down over the top of the drivetrain, and then reinstall after. i dont really know ive never done this on an awd. try a few things before you get pissed off and start fabricating stuff you dont need to make... :D

[therieldeal]

OHHH waiiit I think I get it! The LCA is too "thick"???

Why don't you try some 2wd protégé/escort/323 LCA's? supposedly they bolt up but are slightly wider... also much more common! should work fine but will give you some serious negative camber. I don’t know if that would be good or bad for what you do...

[jay]

We don't want big neg camber. No more than 1.5 degrees.
here's a awd pro lca. It has its own lil subframe. the CV is riding on the lower left corner in this pic...

[therieldeal]

so the INNER cv?

this is actually the exact problem i encountered, and is why i had to raise the engine up ~1" and move it forward ~1". I was hitting the k-frame with the inner cv joint.

raise that sh!t up a little bit!

[jay]

See, y'all don't have a transfer case to worry about. That sh!t pretty much dictates how high or low and at what angle this ironmongery sits at. Right now it's pretty darn close to where it has to be, and raising it up won't solve the inner CV running out of articulation to talk to the trans, it'll make that issue worse...along with pointing the tailshaft of the xfer down toward the ground, eek!

[SgtRauksauff]

hrm....Is it hitting the LCA itself, or the subframe corner hanging it out in midair?

What about some spacers between the body and the subframe at it's mounting points? Shouldn't have any issues with the articulation of the CV then, right? Might change the camber curve a little bit, since the pivot point of the LCA would be lowered by that amount, but the rest of the geometry should stay the same, shouldn't it?

I dunno if you could use just a couple of tube sections as spacers, or if you'd want a billet block machined out, or something re-welded onto either the body, or the LCA subframes...

Is it the solid part of the inner CV, that really won't budge anywhere, or is it the middle-bendy part of the boot?

-sarge

[jay]

The solid part of the CV is hitting the subframe corner that hangs out. Spacering that by the amount needed, 1.5" or so, would generate Huge bumpsteer at best. We'd wanna move the other pivot points by an equal amount and that gets hairy. Looks like we're gonna make tubular goodies that a) let the CV's clear by moving the mount point forward so they pass through, prolly by tieing into the front of the car, eliminating frontend bumpsteer and making for better handling and b) maybe also moving the pivot points closer to the centerline and c)maybe even putting longer tierods in and a faster steering rack. Watch this space, it's getting stoopider and stoopider the more we get into this.

[therieldeal]

i just dont understand why this is such a serious and complicated issue when there are many guys running around down under with this swap completed on awd cars...

[jay]

I've never seen a GTR LCA, but if they're like yours and less like mine, that could be the reason. I'm gonna go try and dig up the build thread, don't think it was Darryl's, that IIRC shows some undercarriage shots.

[therieldeal]

GTR lca's should be exactly the same as yours aside from maybe bushing durometer lol. it definitely uses the same style subframes as your car. the FWD version has a big solid K-frame which isnt terribly useful when you have a driveshaft...

[jay]

We had to take off at least 3/8" more material than anyone else from the xfer to clear the block, too. John is gonna look over the situation some more tomorrow, and we'll see what else can be done that might be easier. Maybe once we try installing the shafts when we final-mock the engine, it won't be as bad as we feared. Maybe we'll find out then that yes indeedy I have the wrong shafts. Anyone got a handy measure for OA length from inside of boot to inside of boot?

Jusat found a shot, http://photos.no-ip.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=53 , that shows the underside of a gtr that got this swap and yeah the LCA's are the same as mine. so why in hell are we having a problem here. Next time I'm up there I'll take lots of piccies and post em so as to get to the bottom of this...

[therieldeal]

i'll measure my spare halfshafts later when i get home, as long as i can find my tape measure!

[jay]

Pretty good milestone. The pax side upper motormount is holding up its share of the engine. The rest of the work is still being done by a 6x6 across the shock towers, but the dern thing is in there and not being held up in place by a dolly anymore. We decided to remove the speedo cable plugin and plugged the hole. It was awful close to the rack and the gears weren't in all that great shape anyway, we worried about them coming apart and ruining everything. We'll run the Terratrip off the driveshaft instead and I don't need no steeenkin speedo. Next up is to find out why we can't get the halfshafts to clear when everyone else can. We'll prolly just need to apply more shoehorn.

[therieldeal]

MOAR SHOEHORN!!

[808]

Knowing you Jay... block the speedo with a piece of paper that says "Really effin' fast!!!!"